Evil and the Effects of Sin ~ Card. Newman

Evil and the Effects of Sin ~ Card. Newman

In the season of Lent we are drawn more strongly to consider the evil of sin. Blessed John Henry Newman prayed: “O my God, teach me this! Give me to understand the enormity of that evil under which I labour and know it not. Teach me what sin is.” Man easily forgets the evil of sin. Yet when we see disease, hatred, wars, etc. we can see the effects of sin. Newman asks “Has God changed His nature?” He replies to his question with a prayer: “O my God, I know full well why all these evils are. Thou hast not changed Thy nature, but man has ruined his own.” Let us examine our souls and seek God’s forgiveness. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches and Newman repeats: sin is infinitely worse than any natural evil. Jesus bids us to turn from sin thinking of everlasting life with Him, and He grants us the necessary graces through prayer and the Sacrament of Confession.

From Meditations and Devotions

1. MY Lord, Thou art the infinitely merciful God. Thou lovest all things that Thou hast created. Thou art the lover of souls. How then is it, O Lord, that I am in a world so miserable as this is? Can this be the world which Thou hast created, so full of pain and suffering? Who among the sons of Adam lives without suffering from his birth to his death? How many bad sicknesses and diseases are there! how many frightful accidents! how many great anxieties! how are men brought down and broken by grief, distress, the tumult of passions, and continual fear! What dreadful plagues are there ever on the earth: war, famine, and pestilence! Why is this, O my God? Why is this, O my soul? Dwell upon it, and ask thyself, Why is this? Has God changed His nature? yet how evil has the earth become!

2. O my God, I know full well why all these evils are. Thou hast not changed Thy nature, but man has ruined his own. We have sinned, O Lord, and therefore is this change. All these evils which I see and in which I partake are the fruit of sin. They would not have been, had we not sinned. They are but the first instalment of the punishment of sin. They are an imperfect and dim image of what sin is. Sin is infinitely worse than famine, than war, than {338} pestilence. Take the most hideous of diseases, under which the body wastes away and corrupts, the blood is infected; the head, the heart, the lungs, every organ disordered, the nerves unstrung and shattered; pain in every limb, thirst, restlessness, delirium—all is nothing compared with that dreadful sickness of the soul which we call sin. They all are the effects of it, they all are shadows of it, but nothing more. That cause itself is something different in kind, is of a malignity far other and greater than all these things. O my God, teach me this! Give me to understand the enormity of that evil under which I labour and know it not. Teach me what sin is.

3. All these dreadful pains of body and soul are the fruits of sin, but they are nothing to its punishment in the world to come. The keenest and fiercest of bodily pains is nothing to the fire of hell; the most dire horror or anxiety is nothing to the never-dying worm of conscience; the greatest bereavement, loss of substance, desertion of friends, and forlorn desolation is nothing compared to the loss of God’s countenance. Eternal punishment is the only true measure of the guilt of sin. My God, teach me this. Open my eyes and heart, I earnestly pray Thee, and make me understand how awful a body of death I bear about me. And, not only teach me about it, but in Thy mercy and by Thy grace remove it. {339}